Apple’s iPhone X wasn’t due to launch until next year and the company almost didn’t make it

IT wasn’t supposed to launch until next year. Apple’s rush to get the iPhone X ready for the smartphone’s tenth anniversary pushed the tech giant to the edge.

APPLE did not plan to launch the iPhone X until next year but fast-tracked the development of the breakthrough device, and new technology including its face-scanner, to meet the iPhone’s 10th anniversary, the company revealed to News Corp in a rare interview with top executives.

The world’s richest technology company revealed the punishing deadline pushed both hardware and software designers, and any one of a number of hurdles could have prevented the redesigned smartphone from launching on time.

The revelations come just two days before the iPhone X is due in Australian stores, and after frenetic pre-orders saw supplies sell out and delayed new iPhone X deliveries until mid-December.

Apple's senior vice-president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, says software and hardware teams worked hard to fast-track the company’s latest smartphone. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP

Apple hardware engineering senior vice-president Dan Riccio told News Corp the technology giant had envisioned delivering a smartphone with a screen covering its entire face “since iPhone one,” but that smartphone’s creation was not due until 2018.

The iPhone X, revealed at an event in September, features an edge-to-edge screen with no Home button, and the addition of a face-scanner to replace the fingerprint sensor on its facade.

“Those technologies, we had line of sight to go out and deliver them next year but through a lot of hard work and talent and grit and determination we were actually deliver them this year,” he said.

“We couldn’t be more proud of the teams that were in a position to introduce not one, not two, but three new iPhone designs in one year.”

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Mr Riccio said the company put the iPhone X on “such a fast track to be able to deliver it this year” that its design, with a 5.8-inch screen and narrow body, was locked in last November.

Apple's iPhone X features a 5.8-inch screen and debuts its Face ID scanner. Picture: Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson

Delivering the first iPhone with no Home button, however, required software changes to allow users to unlock and navigate the handset in a new way, and Apple software engineering senior vice-president Craig Federighi said any one of a number of hurdles could have stalled its creation.

“It’s one of those projects at Apple where you set out to do something where at the outset you all think there’s no way we’re going to pull this off,” he said.

“We all knew where we were going but there were a dozen things we knew we had to solve and, honestly, one of them could have failed to come together.”

Mr Federighi said both hardware and software engineers working on the device knew “where we were going with the industrial design,” but it wasn’t until the final prototypes arrived that they could truly assess what worked and what did not, and finalised the redesigned smartphone.

The iPhone X will be Apple’s first premium smartphone and the most expensive on the market at up to $1829 when it’s released in Australia on Friday.

The smartphone will go head-to-head with Google’s Pixel 2 smartphones, released in Australian stores yesterday, though Apple’s share price rose to an all-time high this week following last week’s iPhone X pre-order rush.

Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson travelled to Cupertino as a guest of Apple.

Originally published as Apple’s iPhone X wasn’t due to launch until next year and the company almost didn’t make it